I am trying to improve my credit and have made major changes I must say I am proud of myself but also want to kick myself becauase its still not good enough. I went from a 480 to 568 in about 7 months...I have gotten good advice but a lot of different information some misleading of course. But I was told I need to get 2 credit cards to build my credit back up which I did, I been paying them on time. Then I have old medical bills on my credit report that I would like to get removed. There from 2004 I have disputed them before and I read some where that if I ask for Physical Verification and the collection agency or original creditor doesn't provide the information requested, the information can be deleted off of my report Correct? Is there anything else I can do to bring my score up that someone can recommend. This is the worst mess to untangle that I have ever gotten myself into. I don't have enough debt to file for BK but enough to deny me from everything my debt doesn't even total 3000.00.
From the Fair Isaac co, the two biggest influences on your score are payment history and utilization. 5-yr old collections, while bad, aren't pulling your scores down too much. (I had a 6-yr old collection go away and saw only a 10-point improvement.) You can try to get them removed, but don't get your hopes up. If the ratio of your total outstanding credit card debt to total credit available (as reported to the CRAs) is less than 10% that's good. More than 30-35%, that's not too bad. More than 50% that's not good. More than 70-80% and you're looking at the biggest problem to solve. If you have 3,000 in debt, you should have 30,000 in available credit to be in good shape. If you only have 5,000 in available credit, then you should start paying down your outstanding cards before tackling anything else.
